With the Inside 3D Printing conference kicking off this week, what better time than now to recap what has been the most eventful year for 3D printing technology so far.

With the Inside 3D Printing conference kicking off this week, what better time than now to recap what has been the most eventful year for 3D printing technology so far. This year, 3D printing technology has entered the mainstream news cycle, causing legal debates and spurring change in the healthcare industry. Here are the top 3D printing developments of the first half of 2013.

After making noise in 2012, Defense Distributed released a video in February that showed its 3D-printed, 30-round magazine for an AR-15 assault rifle in use. Cody Wilson, the group’s founder, taunted gun control advocates by naming the magazine the “Cuomo,” after the New York Governor who helped pass the state’s ban on magazines that can hold more than seven rounds.

In March, roughly a month after releasing the video of the 3D-printed magazine, Defense Distributed announced that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had granted it a federal firearms license, which allows the group to sell its 3D printed firearms and accessories.

In late March, a Gartner report surfaced predicting that the price of enterprise-grade 3D printers would drop below $2,000 by 2016. At such an affordable price point, 3D printers would start to fulfill the lofty expectations that had been set for the technology in the past few years.

Fulfilling his earlier promises, Cody Wilson successfully fired the world’s first 3D-printed gun in early May. All but one part of the gun was made with a 3D printer. For the firing pin, Wilson simply used a standard carpenter’s nail purchased at a hardware store. In total, the gun was made of 16 components, including the nail.

Just days after Wilson’s video made noise, the U.S. State Department confiscated the designs for Defense Distributed’s 3D-printed gun, forcing the company to remove them from the internet pending a review for violations of international weapons laws. By that point, however, many had already gotten their hands on the designs - in their first two days on the internet, the design files were downloaded more than 100,000 times.

In May, NASA issued a $125,000 grant to Systems & Materials Research Corporation (SMRC), which has been developing 3D printed food. NASA is interested in using 3D printing to give astronauts a means of creating food during space travel, a main obstacle to a mission to Mars. Strangely enough, pizza is believed to be one of the easiest foods to create with a 3D printer because it is so distinctly layered.

In late May, the AP reported that doctors in Michigan were preparing to remove a 3D-printed splint that had been supporting the airway of a 19-month-old Ohio boy. In February 2012, doctors at the University of Michigan, after receiving special permission from the FDA, used a 3D printer to create a splint after every other attempt to support the boy’s airway had failed. Fifteen months after the operation, the boy was still breathing on his own and had yet to encounter a breathing crisis.

Amsterdam-based DUS Architects announced its plans to build the world’s first 3D-printed house, the Telegraph reported. To do so, the company is using its custom 3D printer called the KamerMaker, translated from Dutch as “room maker,” to print full-sized replicas of walls printed on a standard printer. The front wall and interior lobby are expected to be completed by the end of the year.

wo years after suffering a carpentry accident that cost him four fingers on his right hand, South African inventor Richard van As developed an operational 3D-printed prosthetic that could work better than the prosthetics available to him. Since then, the “Robohand” has replaced dismembered fingers on four children in South Africa, and in mid-June it reached its funding goal on its Indiegogo campaign.

In late June, enterprise 3D-printing company Stratasys announced a $403 million acquisition of desktop 3D-printing company MakerBot (company founders pictured at left). While MakerBot will continue to make and sell products under its own brand name, the merger will help Stratasys appeal to the broader market for 3D printing, which is attracting interest from more consumers and small businesses than in the past.

Shortly after that merger, 3D Systems announced that it was becoming a key partner of Planetary Resources, which is developing technology to facilitate mining from asteroids. Similar to NASA’s funding of 3D-printed food, Planetary Resources is looking to use the technology to make resources more accessible during space travel.

In a more lighthearted story, the owners of a waterfowl sanctuary designed a 3D-printed prosthetic foot for one of its ducks, named Buttercup, who was born with a deformation, CBS News reported. After creating the design, the owners of the sanctuary contacted 3D printing company Novacopy to print it. The prosthetic is worn like a cast over Buttercup’s foot, and took just a few hours for the duck to learn how to use.